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Track(s) taken from CDA67019

Go, song of mine, Op 57

First line:
Dishevelled and in tears, go, song of mine
composer
1909
author of text
translator of text

London Symphony Chorus, Stephen Westrop (chorus master), Vernon Handley (conductor)
Recording details: April 1998
St Alban's Church, Holborn, London, United Kingdom
Produced by Andrew Keener
Engineered by Antony Howell & Julian Millard
Release date: November 1998
Total duration: 5 minutes 4 seconds
 

Other recordings available for download

Worcester Cathedral Choir, The Donald Hunt Singers, Donald Hunt (conductor)
The Rodolfus Choir, Ralph Allwood (conductor)

Reviews

‘Marvellous songs … most beautifully sung’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘Deserves to remain the authoritative recording for many years to come’ (Choir & Organ)

‘No Elgar fan will want to miss the genuinely valuable disc. Another Hyperion success’ (Classic CD)

‘You cannot do better than a recent Hyperion disc of choral songs. The choral writing is beautiful in an understated way and the performances are winning’ (The New York Times)
Marginally more popular than the Op 53 set, with ten performances, was Elgar’s next and greatest part-song, Go, Song of mine, also written in Italy, this time at Careggi in April 1909. The words, a translation by Rossetti of a medieval Italian poem, again have a distinctly autobiographical ring; the author’s ‘song’ is sent out ‘To break the hardness of the heart of man’. To what extent Elgar applied them to himself we can only speculate, but he certainly gave it ‘a big setting’, as he wrote to Gorton. In fact he asked Novello to produce it as a separate work; ‘that is to say in the usual yellow cover & not in the part-song book: I should propose to put ‘Go, Song of mine’ Chorus (unaccompanied) in six parts &c &c & drop the part-song altogether. It would, I feel sure, be better for the future of the work’. However, Novello did decide to include it in the part-song book, perhaps fearing that to classify it as a separate choral work might deter some choirs. It was premiered at the 1909 Three Choirs Festival at Hereford and was soon taken up by the major competition festivals as another excellent and taxing test-piece.

from notes by Geoffrey Hodgkins © 1998

Other albums featuring this work

Elgar: Go, song of mine & other choral works
SIGCD315Download only
Elgar: The complete choral songs
CDA66271/22CDs Download only
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